One little dedicatory poem says, "Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Another (and it is distinctly associated with what we hold to be a continued little poem, wholly fictitious, in which the poet dramatizes as it were the poetical character) boasts that "Not marble, not the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme." " Without attempting therefore to disprove that these Sonnets were addressed to the Earl of Southampton, or to the Earl of Pembroke, we must leave the reader who fancies he can find in them a shadowy outline of Shakspere's life to form his own conclusion from their careful perusal. We have endeavoured, in our analysis of these poems, to place before him all the facts which have relation to the subject. But to preserve in this place the unity of our narrative with reference to the period before us, we venture to reprint a passage from the Illustrations to which we refer: The 71st to the 74th Sonnets seem bursting from a heart oppressed with a sense of its own unworthiness, and surrendered to some overwhelming misery. There is a line in the 74th which points at suicide. We cling to the belief that the sentiments here expressed are essentially dramatic. In the 32nd Sonnet, where we recognise the man Shakspere speaking in his own modest and cheerful spirit, death is to come across his 'well contented day.' The opinion which we have endeavoured to sustain of the probable admixture of the artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed original fragmentary state, necessarily leads to the belief that some are accurate illustrations of the poet's situation and feelings. It is collected from these Sonnets, for example, that his profession as a player was disagreeable to him; and this complaint is found amongst those portions which we have separated from the series of verses which appear to us to be written in an artificial character. It might be addressed to any one of his family, or some honoured friend, such as Lord Southampton : 'O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, Than public means, which public manners breeds. To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.' But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued to what it worked in,-if thence his name received a brand,—if vulgar scandal sometimes assailed him, he had high thoughts to console him, such as were never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a slight tinge of indifference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has felt something of this. It was reserved for the highest to throw it off, 'like dew-drops from the lion's mane.' But the profound self-abasement and despondency of the 74th Sonnet, exquisite as the diction is, appear to us unreal, as a representation of the mental state of William Shakspere; written, as it most probably was, at a period of his life when he revels and luxuriates (in the comedies which belong to the close of the sixteenth century) in the spirit of enjoyment, rushing from a heart full of love for his species, at peace with itself and with all the world." "MANY were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Such is Thomas Fuller's well-known description of the convivial intercourse of Shakspere and Jonson, first published in 1662. A biographer of Shakspere says, "The memory of Fuller perhaps teemed with their sallies." That memory, then, must have been furnished at secondhand; for Fuller was not born till 1608. beheld them in his mind's eye only. Imperfect, and in many respects worthless, as the few traditions of these wit-combats are, there can be no doubt of the companionship and ardent friendship of these two monarchs of the stage. Ful ler's fanciful comparison of their respective conversational powers is probably to some extent a just one. The difference in the constitution of their minds, and the diversity of their respective acquirements, would more endear each to the other's society. Rowe thus describes the commencement of the intercourse between Shakspere and Jonson :-"His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public.' "* The tradition which Rowe thus records is not supported by minute facts which have since become known. In Henslowe's Diary of plays performed at his theatre, we have an entry under the date of the 11th of May, 1597, of The Comedy of Humours.' This was no doubt a new play, for it was acted eleven times; and there can be little question that it was Jonson's comedy of Every Man in his Humour.' A few months after we have the following entry in the same document:- Lent unto Benjamin Jonson, player, the 22nd of July, 1597, in ready money, the sum of four pounds, to be paid it again whensoever either I or my son shall demand it." Again: "Lent unto Benjamin Jonson, the 3rd of December, 1597, upon a book which he was to write for us before Christmas next after the date hereof, which he showed the plot unto the company: I say, lent in ready money unto him the sum of twenty shillings." On the 5th of January, 1590, Henslowe records in the same way the trifling loan of five shillings. An advance is also made by Henslowe to his company on the 13th of August, 1598, "to buy a book called 'Hot Anger soon cold,' of Mr. Porter, Mr. Chettle, and Benjamin Jonson, in full payment, the sum of six pounds." We thus see, that in 1597 and 1598 there was an intimate connection of Jonson with the stage, but not with Shakspere's company. It can scarcely be supposed that Jonson was a writer for the stage earlier than 1597, and that the "remarkable piece of humanity and good nature" recorded of Shakspere took place before the connection of Jonson with Henslowe's theatre. He was born, according to Gifford, in 1574. In January, 1619, he sent a poetical "picture of himself" to Drummond, in which these lines occur : "My hundred of grey hairs This would place his birth in 1573. Drummond, in narrating Jonson's account of "his own life, education, birth, actions," up to the period in which we have shown how dependent he was upon the advances of a theatrical manager, 'Life of Shakspeare.' See 'Jonson's Conversations with Drummond,' published by the Shakespeare Society. thus writes: "His grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from Annandale to it: he served King Henry VIII., and was a gentleman. His father lost all his estate under Queen Mary, having been cast in prison and forfeited; at last turned minister: so he was a minister's son. He himself was posthumous born, a month after his father's decease; brought up poorly, put to school by a friend (his master Camden); after, taken from it, and put to another craft (I think was to be a wright or bricklayer), which he could not endure; then went he to the Low Countries; but returning soon, he betook himself to his wonted studies. In his service in the Low Countries, he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him; and since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer than his; for the which he was imprisoned, and almost at the gallows. Then took he his religion by trust, of a priest who visited him in prison. Thereafter he was twelve years a Papist." Aubrey says in his random way, "He killed Mr. Marlowe the poet on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain Playhouse." We know where Marlowe was killed, and when he was killed. He was slain at Deptford in 1593. Gifford supposes that this tragical event in Jonson's life took place in 1595; but the conjecture is set aside by an indisputable account of the fact. Philip Henslowe, writing to his son-in-law Alleyn on the 26th of September, 1598, says, "Since you were with me I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly, that is Gabrell [Gabriel], for he is slain in Hogsden Fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer; therefore I would fain have a little of your counsel, if I could."* This event took place then, we see, exactly at the period when Jonson was in constant intercourse with Henslowe's company; and it probably arose out of some quarrel at the theatre that he was "appealed to the fields." The expression of Henslowe, "Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer," is a remarkable one. It is inconsistent with Jonson's own declaration, that after his return from the Low Countries he "betook himself to his wonted studies." We believe that Henslowe, under the excitement of that loss for which he required the counsel of Alleyn, "used it as a term of opprobrium, that was familiar to his company. Dekker, who was a writer for Henslowe's theatre, and who in 1599 was associated with Jonson in the composition of two plays, ridicules his former friend and colleague, in 1602, as a "poor lime and hair rascal,”-as one who ambled "in a leather pilch by a play-waggon in the highway"-"a foul-fisted mortar-treader "-"one famous for killing a player"-one whose face "looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple when it is bruised "-whose "goodly and glorious nose was blunt, blunt, blunt "who is asked, "how chance it passeth that you bid good bye to an honest trade of building chimnies and laying down bricks for a worse handicraftness?"—who is twitted with "dost stamp, mad Tamburlaine, dost stamp; thou think'st thou'st mortar under thy feet, dost?"-one whose face was "punched full of eyelet-holes like the cover of a warming-pan ”—“a hollowcheeked scrag." It is evident from all this abuse, which we transcribe as the " * Letter in Dulwich College, quoted in Collier's 'Memoirs of Alleyn.' 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